Romania passed one million confirmed COVID-19 infections since its first recorded case in February last year.
The bleak milestone comes as hospital intensive care units (ICU) in the country — which has a population of more than 19 million — are struggling to cope with record numbers of ICU patients, currently just short of 1,500. Another 12,000 COVID-19 patients are receiving hospital care.
"It's a situation we haven't encountered until now in Romania," Beatrice Mahler, the manager at the Marius Nasta Institute of Pneumology, told The Associated Press. "Extremely ill patients who arrive with low (oxygen) saturation levels and need an ICU bed — but the number of beds is really limited."
Romania has administered more than 3.5 million vaccine doses. There have been more than 25,000 total confirmed coronavirus deaths.
